LABOR

Representatives of the Retail Wholesale
Union (RWU) were scheduled to meet
with the B.C. Federation of Labor last
week to begin a stepped-up campaign
against Slade and Stewart, the wholesale
grocery distributor which has sought for
eight months to break the union at its
warehouses around the province.

Gail Beau, a Slade and Stewart office
worker and a member of the negotiating
committee, told the Tribune Jan. 22 that
the union would be looking at additional
ways that federation affiliates could put
pressure on companies supplying Slade
and Stewart. The company has lost a sub-

the hot edict earlier issued by the B.C. Fed.
RWU also began a series of newspaper
ads earlier this month focusing on the

stantial number of customers as a result of

Slade and Stewart lockout and a similar
dispute at Okanagan Hotel, Restaurant
and Institution, where RWU members
have been on the picket line for a year.

The ads, entitled ‘‘Strikebreakers: B.C.’s
New Reality”, have underscored the pro-
tracted efforts of both companies to main-
tain their grocery supply operations with
scabs in order to force the union out.

Last May, despite an impending union
vote on the first offer put on the table after
14 months of bargaining, Slade and Ste-
wart put the locks on its food warehouse
operations in Vancouver, Penticton, Kam-
loops and Terrace.

The company, a wholly-owned subsi-
diary of the U.S. multinational Pacific
Gamble Robinson, immediately began a
concerted campaign to run its operations

GAIL BEAU (r)...RWU up against scabs and restrictive legislation.

TRIBUNE PHOTO — SEAN GRIFFIN

non-union. Scab drivers were hired and
security guards and surveillance cameras
were posted near warehouse gates.

The RWU mounted a province-wide
boycott of Slade and Stewart, backed
later by a hot edict issued by the B.C. Fed.
But the company has hundreds of custo-
mers among hotels, restaurants, food
stores, institutions and camps around the
province and enforcing the boycott has
been a mammoth task.

“We’ve been enormously successful in
cutting off customers,” said Beau, estimat-
ing that some 75 per cent of Slade and
Stewart’s customers no longer deal with
the company.

“But now we’re down to the hard-core
customers,” she added.

Beau cited the case of the owner of the
Orange Julius franchise in Chilliwack who
arranged to have produce from Slade and
Stewart delivered by a scab driver to his
home address. Once there, he transfers it
to his own truck and takes it to the fast
food outlet.

That case has also highlighted the new
restrictions on the union posed by the 1984
amendments to the Labor Code, covering
secondary picketing. :

A one-man Labor Relations Board
panel, headed by Peter Sheen, ruled last
year that the union’s picketing of Slade
and Stewart delivery trucks at customers’
loading docks constituted unlawful sec-
ondary picketing under the mewly-
amended code.

A subsequent appeal before a five-
member panel won a ruling that the deliv-
ery trucks were the employer’s place of
work. But the code changes still prevent
workers at those sites where Slade and
Stewart goods are being off-loaded from
refusing to handle them unless Slade and

Stewart workers put up a picket line -

around the truck.

Boycott to tighten on Slade & Stewart

And getting pickets to the loading dock —
before the scab truck drops off the goods |
and goes, is no easy task.

“They’re hiring new scab drivers all the §
. time — and they’re telling them to ‘lose

us, (RWU flying pickets) or lose your job,”
Beau said. She added that a former scab
driver had given them that information.
“They’ve got some of the worst Evel ~

Knievel kind of drivers who follow wild
routes, committing all sorts of illegal acts,
making it almost impossible for our peo-
ple to follow them,” she said.

The trucks themselves, which formerly
carried advertising for the company’s
house brands, Standby, Snoboy and Sun-
shine, have now been painted plain white.
Only the words, Slade and Stewart, in
small print on the door panel, identify
them “and drivers carry white tape to
cover that up, too, depending on where ©
they’re going,” Beau said.

With only some 30 union members at
Slade and Stewart’s Vancouver opera-
tions, the work involved in pressing the
boycott as well as maintaining a picket line —
on the company’s warehouse has been
formidable. But union members have
remained solid for eight months, often tak-
ing picket shifts eight hours long.

“You'll never see a closer group of 30 |
people,” she said. “The company certainly —
hadn’t counted on our holding together as
we have.” * .

Although the meeting with the federa- |
tion last week was expected to concentrate —
on putting new pressure on Slade and
Stewart sources of supplies, Beau emphas-
ized that the union would still be working
on shrinking the customer list. And in
that, the public has a role to play, she said.

“We're asking people: when you go into
a restaurant or a food store, ask whether —
they get produce from Slade and Stewart.
If they say they do, get up and walk out.”

‘Don’t ratify salmon treaty, UFAWU demands |

Calling the draft treaty “a disaster for the
West Coast fishing industry and an affront
to Canadian sovereignty,” the United
Fishermen and Allied Workers Union Fn-
day called on the Mulroney government not
to ratify the proposed Canada-U.S. salmon
interception agreement and put it instead
before a House Committee.

In an emergency telegram to Mulroney,
External Affairs Minister Joe Clark and
Fisheries Minister John Fraser, the UFAWU -
officers declared: “The new draft treaty will
mean massive transfers of salmon to the
U.S., unheard of dislocation for Canadian
fishermen and unworkable regulations for
fisheries management.

“As representatives of West Coast Cana-
dian fishermen, we urge that you imme-
diately place this treaty before the Standing
Committee on Fisheries and Forestry for
full examination of all the consequences of
this proposed treaty,” the telegram stated. It
was signed by UFAWU president Jack
Nichol, secretary George Hewison and bus-
iness agent Bill Procopation.

The telegram was prompted by the.
announcement by Mulroney Jan. 24 that
the federal cabinet had approved the
treaty — an approval given despite the
opposition of fishermen’s groups and des-
pite the fact that questions still remain with
the interpretation of treaty provisions.

“We haven’t even seen the corrected
draft of the treaty and we haven’t received
the background papers on the exact
numbers of fish Canada could lose under
the agreement,” Procopation told a press
conferente Jan. 25.

“Yet the government is pushing ahead
even before the U.S. has ratified,” he said.

The proposed agreement is still before a
Senate committee for review although

12 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 30, 1985

«

American approval is — understandably
— expected quickly.

Procopation called on the Mulroney
government to schedule hearings before the
standing committee to give fishermen and
others an opportunity to put their views
forward and to review documents related to
treaty negotiations.

The salmon treaty is made necessary by
the fact that fishermen on both sides of the
Canada-U.S. boundary “intercept” fish
bound for each other’s rivers. The current

draft was nearly two decades in the making. .

Although some principles were laid
down in 1971 — that equity would be
reached through reductions in interceptions
and that each country would strive to harv-

est the fish raised in its rivers — Canada”

has moved steadily away from that position
in the years since, under relentless U.S. pres-
sure for major concessions.

UFAWU secretary George Hewison told
the press conference that the current draft
treaty would compromise Canadian sover-
eignty and impose closures which would,
among other consequences, lead to the loss
of several coast communities.

Fishermen warn particularly about pro-
visions of the treaty which:

®@ Give U.S. fishermen a guaranteed
share of Canadian salmon bound for the
Fraser, provision which threatens increased
closures for Canadian fishermen;

@ Call for submission of management
plans for Canadian salmon to a commission
made up of 50 per cent U.S. representatives,
with disputes to be settled by arbitration.
The UFA WU called this provision “a clear
erosion of Canadian sovereignty;”

@ Cut both commercial and_ sport
fishermen in the Gulf of Georgia to 275,000
chinook salmon. In 1984, .commercial

fishermen took 90,000 salmon, and sport
fishermen, some 400,000;

-@ Eliminate any mechanism for balanc-
ing interceptions if one country deliberately
or accidentally increases its harvest of the
other’s fish.

Even one of the provisions on which the
treaty was first offered to fishermen — the
promise of salmon enhancement on the
Fraser River — has been thrown into

doubt by the comments of Garnet Jone
chief Canadian negotiator. Jones told the
House Standing Committee Dec. 16 that
enhancement could mean ‘enhancement
through management”, indicating that 4
build-up of fish stocks would be achieved
not through new programs, but through
strict closures and limits on fishermen.

That was the route proposed by the
Pearse report, rejected by a coalition 0
fishermen’s groups.

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